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The license plate on Jim Knipe's car reads "69 INDY." Last year, he said, Mario Andretti autographed the plate for him. "I'm a pretty heavy-duty Mario Andretti fan," Knipe, a 58-year-old Bethlehem resident, said this week. Considering that it has been more than 20 years since Andretti drove his final IndyCar series race, the fact that Knipe still has such a passionate interest in the 1967 Daytona 500 winner, 1969 Indianapolis 500 winner, 1978 Formula One world champion and four-time Indy-car national champion is beyond commendable. But this week, Knipe has taken that passion to another level. On Tuesday, Knipe initiated a petition to get the...

When one party owns the White House and the other holds Congress, the president's annual budget is a strange, almost fictional document. It's not a draft from which the real federal budget will be written; Congress controls that process from beginning...

WASHINGTON — Hours before President Barack Obama wrapped up his prime-time State of the Union address, Sen. Pat Toomey's staff went over the logistics of their boss' response.
Included was how to meet up with Toomey afterward on the other side of...

In Hershey, GOP works to 'manage expectations'
Lehigh Valley Congressman Charlie Dent played host Wednesday evening and Thursday to his GOP colleagues in the House and Senate, who trekked to Hershey for their beginning-of-session retreat.
There, they...

Of all the shocks and revelations in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture, one seems very strange and unlikely: that the agency misinformed the White House and didn't even brief President George W. Bush about its controversial program...

Lyndon B. Johnson loved to drink and drive (and at a high rate of speed) in his Lincoln Continental.
Richard Nixon was known to drunk-dial major political figures late at night from the White House.
And Franklin D. Roosevelt, while president, once hid...

WASHINGTON— Gov.-elect Tom Wolf is heading to the nation's capital on Friday, where he and other newly elected governors will be meeting with the president, a White House official said Tuesday
The group of governors will be meeting with President...

President Barack Obama is now officially a lame duck: no more elections left, and facing GOP majorities in the Senate, House, governors' mansions and even the Supreme Court, in a sense, where five of the nine justices were appointed by Republicans. But...

Renowned trumpeter Herb Alpert has had an incredible career of highlights over the past 55 years – and recognition for it.
He’s had more than 40 songs that were Top 30 hits on the Adult Contemporary and R&B charts – including six No. 1s in three...

— The first known case of Ebola contracted in the United States is giving urgency to moves by lawmakers to boost funding for a response after years of cuts to federal prevention and research budgets.
With health officials raising the prospect of more...

Would a Republican takeover of the Senate improve the prospects that an immigration bill will get to President Barack Obama's desk? That theory is making the rounds and some of the people who oppose the dominant approach to immigration reform are starting...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Barack Obama pardoned Cheese the national Thanksgiving turkey in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday.
U.S. presidents have been pardoning turkeys since the 1800s as part of the country's national Thanksgiving...

— For 12-year-old Jonathan Okasinski, a visit to the White House where he shook the president's hand Tuesday started with a book on quantum physics.
The Harleysville student picked up the library book on a concept known as quantum entanglement, in...

Last month, I likened President Obama's reaction to ISIS as being in Alice's Wonderland. Recently a federal judge said that Obama's arbitrary rewrites of the Obamacare law "leads us down a path toward Alice's Wonderland where up is down and down is...

Vice President Joe Biden has had to apologize, twice, to two key U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State. It wasn't because he lobbed false accusations at them. It was because he accidentally told some inconvenient truths.
Speaking at the John...

HARRISBURG — A whopping $100 million tax payment to Pennsylvania by the estate of a conservative billionaire is a welcome addition to the state's strained finances, state officials said on Monday.The inheritance tax payment made by the estate of...

While most little boys dream of being a fireman or astronaut, Chris Franklin's career goal was set at age 6 watching an episode of the cartoon series "Scooby-Doo," on which the mystery-solving crew met up with the Harlem Globetrotters basketball...

The situation on South Broad Street was potentially volatile.
Protesters wanted to deliver thousands of petitions to Comcast Corp. executives and directors after a public meeting at the Kimmel Center in May. They were upset over Comcast's proposed...

As American television viewers gear up for the new fall lineups, it appears that the White House is still stuck in reruns. Once again, President Obama is talking about circumventing Congress and planning to do so in a way that will only make the problem...

HARRISBURG — On the eve of the state's first gubernatorial debate, a new poll shows Democrat Tom Wolf still coasting with a double-digit lead over Republican Gov. Tom Corbett.
The Morning Call/Muhlenberg College Poll released Sunday shows 52 percent of...